Generally speaking point-of-sale (i.e., checkout) systems are computing systems that facilitate the exchange of goods/services for a payment. In general, these systems require customer payment information in order to process a cashless transaction. Traditionally, this payment information was provided by manually swiping a credit card through a magnetic reader. Recently, mobile devices (e.g., smartphones or feature phones) have begun to replace traditional credit cards for retail payments. For example, a mobile device capable of near field communication (NFC) can communicate with a point-of-sale (POS) system to exchange payment information and process the transaction. Unfortunately, a large number of customers do not use these NFC-enabled mobile devices. All mobile devices are likely, however, to be equipped with a camera and a display. These mobile devices could process a transaction with a point-of-sale terminal if there was an adapter in place that allowed the mobile device to visually communicate using its camera and display.
A need, therefore, exists for a mobile-device adapter that facilitates the exchange of visual information through the use of a mobile-device's camera and display.